


lavender, rose quartz, and thyme

by megancrtr



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 05:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7744708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megancrtr/pseuds/megancrtr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kent knew about superstitions before he made it to hockey. He knew about black cats and broken mirrors. About stepping on cracks and throwing pinches of salt over his shoulder. Kent knew about magic before he found hockey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lavender, rose quartz, and thyme

-

Kent knew about superstitions before he made it to hockey. He knew about black cats and broken mirrors. About stepping on cracks and throwing pinches of salt over his shoulder. Kent knew about magic before he found hockey.

His mom cleaned houses and sold spells on the side to make a living: tied up pouches of wax paper, plastic wrap or cheap cloth. They were filled with herbs and spices pinched from pots and plants crowding their apartment. Filled with rocks and dirt filched from between the sidewalks and seasoned with water from rainstorms that had made both puddles and rainbows.

They'd go out together, after new storms, before storms, in the middle of storms, collecting raindrops and frog legs, drowned butterflies and breaths of fog. They'd gather first snows and last snows, rotten wood logs and bright red maple leaves.

She stuffed his pockets with rosemary his first day of school and, even before hockey was anything serious, washed his jersey with the precious four leaf clovers they had gathered and saved from the previous spring. 

She taught him to cook love potions during the new moon, using an open fire and a cauldron she found in a second hand shop after Halloween. She taught him to make incenses that drove away colds during the full moon and how to know when frog eggs were ripe for a curse. She taught him to find cockroaches in laundry mats to feed crows in exchange for one of their best black feathers, and she taught him which stones to string together to ward off bad dreams.

When Kent first started playing hockey that mattered, leaving home and his mother's spells, two things happened:

First: He made it to practice early every day, cutting the ice before anyone else got to it and scooping up those first ice shavings. There was something magical about first ones that the third and fourth just couldn't compete with. Usually, he used them to water his thyme.

Second: His mom tied up a pouch for him. She filled it with a rock collected during a first snowfall, a sprig from her favorite oak tree, and the soft down collected from a blue jay's nest.

He kept it in his pocket, right next to the flip phone that he rarely used because minutes were expensive and, when the economy tanked, witchcraft was the first thing people stopped buying. He didn't wear his mom's gift during practice, but he did during games, tucked deep into his padding. He always tapped it twice before he took the ice.

When Kent learned he'd be going to Canada to skate in Rimouski, he spent the proceeding days chewing on cattail reeds to help his Québécois. He went to his billet family with a bag for hockey, a bag for clothes, his thyme plant and the pouch his mother gave him.

-

Kent was used to being first on the ice, not always to seriously practice, but always to collect the first ice shavings for his thyme. 

The first day at the Colisée, Kent figured fifteen minutes before morning practice would be enough time to collect ice. He was right. And he scooped the ice shavings into a plastic water bottle, and then hurried off the ice to stick it in the back of his locker where no one would see.

To his surprise, another kid was there when he arrived back in the locker room. His name was Jack. Jack Zimmermann. And just like how Jack was there to Kent's surprise, Kent was there to Jack's surprise.

"I'm normally first on the ice," Jack said.

"Well, I like to cut the ice first. Habit."

The second day, Kent arrived second. The third day, he was first, arriving twenty minutes early. The fourth day, Jack was there before him, having come in a full thirty minutes before morning practice began. The next day Kent made it in thirty-five minutes early. The day after, Jack arrived at 5:20. They kept going, sneering at each other without saying much, staying on their side of the ice, until Jack was there at 4:55, and Kent trucked onto the ice at 4:56, having no idea which ice shavings were the first ice shavings and his thyme fucking thirsty for water.

"What is your problem?" Kent snapped as he skated out, wondering if he could just drop his gloves and have at it. 

"My problem? You're the one here just as early!"

"You don't have to always be first on the ice!"

"Well, neither do you," Jack snapped back, clutching his hockey stick.

Kent flushed. Because he did. He really did. Not that Jack would understand.

"What?" Jack said, skating closer with a laugh, "Cat got your tongue?"

Kent turned a brighter red and muttered about cattails and ice shavings, his Québécoisfaltering embarrassingly on his tongue.

"Didn't hear you," Jack said with a sneer, a sudden stop and the hushed sound of skates tossing up ice. 

"I just want the first fucking ice shavings, okay? You can be fucking first on the ice for all I care, but then you've got to bottle them the fuck up for me."

Jack froze. "What?"

"The first ice shavings, man," Kent said. "I use it to water my thyme."

"Your what?"

"It's a plant, idiot."

"I know what thyme is!" Jack said in a rush and with a blush. "My mom has a garden."

"Yeah, well, stop wasting time and just tell me you'll bottle up the first ice shavings for me. Then you can always be first on the ice, and I can get my fucking beauty sleep in." Kent paused, tossed his head. "Not that I need it."

Jack sputtered and laughed. "You need all you can get. I'll get you your first ice shavings."

"Don't think about getting me any sloppy seconds," Kent warned. "I'll know if you give me shit water." Jack flushed and muttered about not being a fucking liar. They shook hands on the deal and then passed the puck back and forth, taking slap shots at the net and seeing if they could pass successfully to each other with one eye, then both eyes, closed. They definitely failed.

Kent slept in before the next practice, and Jack handed him a plastic water bottle of melted ice.

"Thanks," Kent said, grabbing it and setting it in his locker. "She's fucking thirsty."

"No problem," Jack replied. "Missed you this morning," Jack said after a pause, shifting a little awkwardly. 

"What time did you get in?"

"Four," Jack said.

Kent's eyes popped open. "You're not serious?"

"I thought you were lying."

"Naw," Kent said, eyes slipping shut because any time before seven was still early. "I don't lie. Especially not about the beauty sleep."

"Well you're looking better already."

Kent's eyes flashed open, but Jack was already moving away.

Jack did not give Kent shit water. His thyme bloomed its tiny purple flowers the next day, and Kent dragged himself into the rink thirty minutes before practice. Jack was hitting around a puck when Kent entered, his duffel bag slung across his shoulders.

"Thought you'd be here," Kent said. Jack grinned and skated towards him, handling the puck with slow, lazy strokes.

"I got your ice," Jack said, nodding to a water bottle on the bench. 

"Yeah, well, I figured you might enjoy some company. Sort of as a thank you for the ice. I don't think I can do earlier, since—"

"You need your beauty sleep."

Kent wanted to beat that grin off of Jack's face. Except it was kind of cute. It was a good look for Jack. That smile. All beautiful teeth and slightly chapped lips. Probably because Jack licked them all the time. Kent coughed. No homo. "Yeah. But, uh, yeah, if you want, I can join you."

"Sounds good," Jack said.

Kent went to change.

-

When Kent got drunk during parties, he liked to stand under stars and capture starlight in empty beer bottles. Sometimes, if he remembered in the morning, he'd stumble to find one of the bottles he capped at night and ship it home to his mother. In summer, he caught fireflies in the bottles instead, letting them back out before the sun rose and they suffocated, but not before he muttered the rhyme his mother taught him to help pour their light into his soul.

He learned quickly that other kids didn't do as he did, even when drunk. So he usually pretended to be about ten times drunker than he actually was before he went into the party house's suburban yard and plucked dew stained grass or picked up bright red leaves and muttered rhymes about thyme.

Jack sometimes joined him, almost always chirping him about his thyme as a conversation starter. Usually it was a pun that Kent had heard at least a million times already.

One time, Kent offered the bottled starlight to Jack. "For a cloudy day," he said as Jack took it skeptically. "Just break the bottle and say the rhyme."

"What rhyme?" Jack asked.

"Twinkle, twinkle little star."

"You're shitting me."

"Of course," Kent said. "Nothing magical about the twinkling star. Now, repeat after me."

Jack dutifully repeated the rhyme back, holding the beer bottle filled with starlight and fresh night air.

When Kent visited Jack after that, he always saw the bottle, carefully balanced on Jack's windowsill and a post-it note with the rhyme stuck onto the label.

"Glad you haven't had a cloudy day yet," Kent said every time he saw it. "It must be because I'm just that much of a shining personality."

Jack laughed, and if Kent took a step closer, he could totally kiss Jack's… cheek.

-

Kent got a couple more plants during the season, but it was only his thyme he watered with the first ice shavings. He got some English ivy and a peace lily and he grew marigolds out of season to give his room some color.

Jack used to laugh and say he could tell when Kent was feeling shitty just by looking at his plants. He wasn't wrong. One time, Kent was pissed for fifteen days after fifteen days of not making a single in game goal and his marigolds died and the other plants wilted like they didn't get a drop of water. Kent called it a coincidence, bad luck. But his mom scowled at him when he sent her a photo and asked what he was doing wrong. She told him to go to pick up some amethyst and sleep with it under his pillow for three days and then divide it between his plants.

Kent didn't have the money for amethyst. He'd spent the last of the little stipend from Rimouski on the movies last week, him and Jack shoveling popcorn into their mouths from a shared bucket. Kent had shelled out for the popcorn. He liked the way his and Jack's hand would sometimes bump in the bucket. Currently penniless, Kent bemoaned his situation to Jack over his billet family's copy of Call of Duty, his dying plants in the background. 

"Where do you even buy fucking amethyst?" Jack asked.

"Mom always had some lying around. Passed down through the family, you know?"

"No," Jack said with a laugh. "I don't fucking know. You and your mom are weird."

Kent shrugged and nailed a guy in the head. "Nothing brings a family together like dancing naked during the summer solstice."

Jack spun to Kent. "Are you serious?"

Kent took the opportunity to annihilate Jack in the game. Pow, pow. "Naw man," Kent said with a wild grin. "We'd be arrested for public indecency or something." 

"So amethyst is going to solve all your problems?"

"Sort of," Kent said, because nothing is ever quite certain with magic. "It would've helped if nothing else."

"We'll practice tomorrow," Jack said. "Me and you. Some one-on-one. You'll score next game. Don't need any stupid rock."

Kent did not score once during practice. 

Jack met him after school the next day, catching him before they headed to rink. "I got something," he said and spilled amethyst into Kent's hands three days before the next game.

"I could kiss you," Kent said, but settled for kissing the amethyst when Jack looked mildly horrified. Kent slept with the stone under his pillow every night until the game. He scored a hat trick that night. He asked Jack to do the honors of smashing the stone to bits with a hammer and then Kent doled it out between the plants.

His peace lily budded that night.

-

Kent broke a sprig of lavender every night for two weeks halfway through his first year at Rimouski, dropping its ends into a cup of water before he went to bed. The next day, he carefully and covertly spilled it onto the ice to freeze before each practice when Jack was looking the other way. Kent was pretty sure something was happening between the two of them. But the lavender would let him know for sure.

On the fourteen day, Jack jerked him off.

Kent was going for a kiss on the ice, but he definitely was not complaining about the other outcome. He wondered if he'd gotten lucky with lavender picked exactly seven days after its first bloom. They did it in the locker room—in the showers, more specifically—after everyone else had hurried off to make homeroom which Jack and Kent definitely did not care about. The NHL didn't care a lick about grades. Jack's came up behind him, said something about Kent looking tense and then dropped his hand to Kent's dick, pressed his chest flush up against Kent's back. Water couldn't even run between them. Fucking unbelievable. Kind of magical. Definitely something Kent had seen in porn.

Kent came with Jack's name on his lips.

Praise be to lavender.

Jack didn't give Kent time to return the favor. They had to make it to first period on time at the very least.

-

They road tripped down to Victoriaville on a Friday night to play Tigres on Saturday, a five hour bus ride where Jack never stopped bouncing his knee. When they got to the motel room, Jack muttered about going for a walk. Kent rolled his eyes and went with him. Jack didn't say anything, and Kent filled the silence with chirps and gossip about the team. Halfway through retelling Doug's embarrassing breakup, Kent caught sight of a flier advertising the game, and Kent stopped.

"Kent?" Jack said.

"You're nervous about the game, aren't you?" Kent asked, and Jack shrugged, but didn't say anything, which said everything. "We should curse them."

Jack snorted. "We already do that during the game."

"No," Kent said shaking his head, "with frog eggs. Let's do it proper."

"Do you even know where to buy frog eggs?"

Kent grinned and tore down the poster. "No, but any kind of egg will probably do. I saw a grocery store a couple of blocks back."

"You're not serious."

"As cancer." Kent took off running, the poster clutched in his hands. Jack sprinted after him.

Kent got eggs, birthday candles, a box of matches, and picked up a couple of rusty somethings off the ground on the way back. Jack said something about this not being sanitary.

Kent laughed. "Just wait."

They went back to the hotel room, materials in hand, and Jack watched, fascinated and horrified as Kent chanted, lighting candles and precariously sticking them into complimentary soap bars to hold them up.

"Don't curses come back threefold?" Jack asked in a staged whisper, their window open to whip away the smoke. It was much better at just pulling in the freezing winter air.

"Never happened to me," Kent said. "I've cursed plenty of things. Got my teacher really good once. He had the shits for ages. Here," Kent handed Jack the poster, "rip this up and toss it in the trash."

Jack took the poster and did as he was told, Kent muttering over the rusty bits and the egg. When Jack was done, Kent grabbed the trashcan, dropped the rusty bits in, and then cracked the egg over top. He rearranged the candles, and then said, "Now we pee in it."

"You're shitting me?"

Kent stood up instead of answering, unzipping his fly. "Let's go," Kent said. "I'm not cursing them alone."  

Jack rocked to his feet. "I can't believe—You're insane."

"Mom normally substitutes for this part, but we're a little low on materials, so…"

He and Jack peed into the trashcan, and then they dragged it outside—swishing piss and egg yolks—lighting the entire thing on fire. Somehow. They lost the trashcan in a mangled mess, but Jack laughed and said he'd foot the bill if the hotel charged them for it.

They crushed Tigres so absolutely that no one could have predicted it. Kent and Jack dropped pucks into the net like there was no goalie, no defenders, no one on the ice but the two of them. Like no one had come to play except them. Kent got a hat trick. Then Jack did.

They laughed and collided on the ice together. Jack's glove cuffing the side of his head, pulling him in roughly. The celly grew. Kent had only eyes for Jack. If they were alone, if their helmets were off, he'd go for it. He'd kiss him.

-

Kent didn't just jerk Jack off the first time he got him off, Kent got to suck Jack off. They were at a party, Kent with three too many beers than he should've had and Jack with only one less. Kent got Jack into a bathroom and dropped to his knees, tugging Jack's pants down before he could properly protest. As the style went, no one wore tight belts at the time, but Jack's pants did catch around Jack's knees. No worries. It was far enough. 

Jack said some stuff about risk and stupidity and not worth it at all, but Jack shut up when Kent got Jack's dick in his mouth. Jack's fingers ran through Kent's already messy hair, tugged on it. Jack moaned. He sounded really good doing it. The best. Fucking amazing.

Porno quality.

Except behind the two of them was a storyline that spanned seven months and countless mornings together and the best hockey in the entire world and inside jokes and a secret handshake that they did before every game and a patented no-look one-timer. And no one was acting. Fuck. Kent wanted nothing more than to get Jack off, and, even though Kent choked a couple of times and didn't swallow—Jack gasping something and jerking back out of Kent's mouth—it was amazing. Ten out of ten would do again.

Next time though, because there was going to be a next time, Kent was going to swallow everything. "More pineapple," he said to Jack afterwards, tonguing alongside Jack's dick, careful not to touch the tip. Jack flushed and ran his hand down over Kent's cheek, eyes droopy.

Then they went downstairs, and Kent won the beer pong tournament.

-

They jerked each other off in the showers, hotel rooms, their own rooms. Mouths close but not touching, breathing hard against each other's throats, cheeks, ears. Sometimes Kent sucked off Jack. Which was awesome. But Kent wanted something more. He wanted to kiss him, wanted to say _yes I want this, I want you_ without, well, having to say. Because Kent was not so good with serious words.

Kent planned to use spin-the-bottle to get his first kiss from Jack. It might not be the best way to start the something more—something more steady, more passionate, more fulfilling—that Kent wanted with Jack, but Jack kept twisting his head away whenever Kent went for it—drunk, sober, high off adrenaline, alone in the shower. 

So Kent rimmed the top of the spin-the-bottle bottle with some jasmine and dumped its little white flowers inside. Kent needed every little bit of magic that he could get in order to kiss Jack and to definitely not kiss Doug. He handed the bottle to Julie, who took it with a flourish and somehow organized them all into a haphazard circle—Kent squished between Sara and Jams and Jack across the way, holding a beer and pressed tightly up against Kat. Or maybe Kat was pressed tightly up against him. Kent wasn't so sure with so much alcohol in him.

No time to get smashed like at a house party lacking adult supervision.

And Jack, fuck, Jack looked good. He looked relaxed, well as relaxed as someone could be with Kat trying to drape herself on him. Kent wondered if Jack had found some weed, he looked so chill for his situation. But no, if Jack had gotten some, he would've definitely shared with Kent, and then they definitely would've hooked up.

The game went like this: Kent kissed Julie, and it was alright. It was whatever. Jack kissed Susan, and Kent felt jealously spike hard through his stomach. Jack pulled away first, her fingers still tangled in his hair. Long hair that curled around his ears. Kent's fingers itched. He wanted to brush it back, tuck it behind Jack's ear. Drop his hand to the back of Jack's neck then—Then Susan kissed Doug, and Doug spun to Kat. And Kat spun to Kent. It was alright. It was whatever. Then Jack spun to Kat. And Kent hoped that Jack tasted him on her mouth, even though Jack didn't know what Kent tasted like. At least not yet.

Then Kent was spinning and he spun to… Sara. And the game went round and round and Kent kissed lots of people and so did Jack, taking sips of gas station beer between each kiss, and then Jack spun and it landed on Kent.

Everyone laughed and jeered, but not too hard because Kent had already kissed Tim, and then Jams and what was one more gay kiss? But then they might have actually chirped them a little harder, because they were Jack and Kent. Kent and Jack.

Jack moved across the circle to Kent, and Kent grinned something wicked, because he was feeling wicked.

Jack dropped down in front of Kent and said, "You've wanted this for a long time, huh?"

Kent laughed, dropping his voice just this side of teasing. "Oh yeah baby, give it to me good. Put some French in me." And Jack cracked up so hard, he physically could not control himself enough to kiss Kent. He was literally holding up the game with his howls of laughter and Kent scowled, because Jack had kissed at least seven girls tonight and couldn't bring himself to kiss Kent. Kent knew a fucking stall tactic when he saw one. He was pissed. Kent had sucked Jack's fucking dick. Multiple times. And Jack couldn't even pony up for a damn kiss under the pretense of too much drinking and peer pressure. The easiest kind of kiss to wave away. To pretend never happened. 

"Come on," Sara groaned. "Jack, just kiss your boy."

"Yeah," Kent drawled after her. "Kiss me, and then Sara and I can have another go."

Sara laughed. "You're a good kisser Kent. Once you pucker up for Jack, come back to me and I'll see if you improved at all. Then maybe we can find out what else you can do with your mouth. Yeah?"

And the circle ooo-ed and ahh-ed. Jack stopped laughing enough by that time to press hands to both side of Kent's face and pull him down, planting a wet, sloppy, fucking-awful kiss against Kent's cheek. Not even his fucking mouth.

"Chicken," Kent whispered sharply, and Jack's breath hitched. "I'm going to go fuck Sara now," Kent continued, before he pulled away. "Right in her pussy."

"Think of me," Jack sneered back. Kent's heart dropped as he stood. He watched Jack step back into his place at the circle, reclaim his bottle and then raise it to Kent. Kent swallowed and made his way over to Sara.

His head spun as he wondered what magic was at work here. His mother's warnings about overuse and bad ingredients flickered through his mind.

And Kent froze, Sara's hand hot in his.

"Give me a second," he said quickly. He pulled away, reached down to grab the bottle from the floor. Sara said something about cold feet, and Kent ignored her. He tipped the bottle over and the tiny white flowers he'd scraped along the lip of the bottle and then stuffed inside spilled into his palm. He pulled one up closer and swallowed down bile. It was false jasmine, he saw as the petals wilted yellow. He had lined the bottle with false jasmine.

"Everything okay?" Jack asked him softly, standing up from the circle.

"Everything's fine," Kent forced himself to push out. He forced himself to grin broad and stupid, and declare loudly to the room. "Gonna get some tail." Because if he backed out now, he'd never hear the end of it. If he backed out now, everyone would know something was wrong.

Sara laughed and Kat cat-called, and Kent scooped up Sara's hand, pressing her knuckles to his lips. "Shall we?" He led her up the stairs, the false jasmine clutched tight in his hand.

For some insane reason, Kent imagined Jack would sprint into the room and demand they stop fucking and then he would take Sara's place. Or Kent would take Sara's place and Jack his place or whatever. Kent wasn't picky.

But it had been false jasmine in the bottle, and Jack did not come up. Not even to bang loudly on the door and tell them to shut up.

Sara was loud, like Kent couldn't imagine Jack being. But it helped that she had dark hair.

When Kent went downstairs, smelling like sex, like Sara, Jack was waiting for him. He was Kent's ride for the night, because they were young and stupid and thought that late nights meant empty roads and the freedom to drive drunk. Jack had a beer in his hand. But Kent didn't suggest a walking check to see who was less drunk and a better bet to drive. Jack already had the keys. They both felt stone cold sober.

Kent got into shot gun.

"What did you put in the bottle?" Jack asked halfway back to their billet families' neighborhood. "Some drugs?"

Kent shot up in his seat. "What? What fuck no. No, I would never—Jack!"

Jack's fingers tightened around the steering wheel. "I wouldn’t judge you if—"

"It was jasmine," Kent said. He dropped back down, looking out the window once it became apparent Jack wasn't going to look at him. "Well, I put in false jasmine. Wanted a kiss and royally fucked up."

Jack laughed something cold. "You got a lot of kisses. And it sounded like you fucked pretty well. Maybe not royally though."

"It was supposed to be jasmine," Kent said, as if it made sense to Jack. "Add a little magic to the night."

Jack snorted.

Kent ran a hand through his hair, glancing at Jack, then staring out the window. "But I put in false jasmine. It was supposed to be real jasmine and then we were gonna kiss."

Jack slammed on the brakes. Kent flung out his arms, catching himself on the dashboard.

"What the fuck?"

"What the fuck?" Jack repeated back, his voice higher than Kent had heard before. "You planned that?"

"I just wanted to fucking kiss you!"

"Well you fucked her instead."

"Yeah, yeah I did! And it fucking rocked," Kent said even though it didn't rock at all. Kent spun around as lights flashed towards them. "Pay attention, Jack," Kent snapped when Jack didn't do anything. Didn't talk. Didn't start the truck again. "Get us off the fucking road or just fucking drive." It felt like the false jasmine was slowly crawling up his hand, strangling his skin. Destroying everything magical in his life. Destroying everything that was him and Jack.

Jack drove onto the shoulder. He stopped the car. He put it in park. He turned off the engine. Kept the lights on. He put his hands on the steering wheel and pressed the top of his head against it.

"The fuck are you doing?" Kent asked. "We've got to get home."

"Give me a second," Jack said, muttered.

Kent froze. He listened to Jack's haggard breathing, watched his hunched position. "Do you need something?" he said. But not softly, not slowly, because they were bros. Not girlfriends who chatted about feelings in emotional voices. Just bros who jacked each other off and sometimes sucked each other off, but never kissed. So still bros. Still bros. Even though Kent really, really wanted to be something else, something more. Jack didn't answer. "I can get out if you need me to—"

"Shut up, Kent," Jack gritted out, and Kent snapped his mouth shut, staring off to the side of the road. There were a couple of road lights out there. It was a barren drive between suburban neighborhoods. The moon was half full. Kent couldn't remember if it was waxing or waning, and Kent couldn't remember how the moon would have affected the jasmine, false or not. And Jack, fuck, Jack. He hadn't kissed Jack, hadn't slid his hands through Jack's hair, hadn't slid his tongue inside Jack's mouth, pulled at his bottom lip, pulled him—

Kent jerked up as the door flew open. Jack's hands fumbled at his seat belt. He tumbled out of the door. Kent made an aborted motion after him. Jack went to the front of the car. He walked past it. He went off a little ways, hunched back. He straightened, laced his fingers behind his head, looked up at the moon. Breathing. A steady, heavy up and down of his shoulders. The headlights illuminating him, his movement.

Kent waited for Jack to come back. Jack didn't come back. Didn't turn around. Kent reached for the horn, then stopped. He got out of the car instead, walked up to Jack. "I'll drive," Kent said, and Jack nodded, his back to him. He didn't move anymore. "Jack," Kent tried. "Zimms."

Jack turned and tossed Kent the keys. Like their patent no-looker. Except Kent didn't feel any satisfaction, any pride. Kent didn't hear a swell of excitement from a watching crowd. Didn't hear his coach's roar of approval. Didn't catch Jack's wild grin after it connected.

They got in the car. Jack didn't say anything. Kent tried to, but all his words lodged in his throat, forcing him to take shallow, fast breaths.

Kent pulled into the driveway, Jack's billet family's driveway, and parked. He got out, tossed Jack the keys, shoved his hands in his pockets. He rolled between his toes and heels. Jack went inside without a word, without a glance. Kent turned his back on the house and went three houses down to his billet family.

Instead of going to sleep, Kent ripped apart his room. He unlaced pouches and dug through piles of stones. He picked through garbage and raked his fingers through his billet family's messes, searching for the blue-green shine of chrysocalla. He needed the peace it could bring now, and the clarity it would give him tomorrow. He needed it before he saw Jack tomorrow. He didn't know how else to open his throat, to ease the words out of his body and into the air.

He didn't find it.

The sun rose, and Kent went to practice early. Of course Jack got there earlier.

"Stick handling isn't gonna win you any games," Kent said, standing at the boards, laced up. He was amazed he got any words out of his mouth. Jack ignored him. "You got to shoot it."

Jack slammed the puck into the net. He swerved up to reclaim it, skated away, slammed the puck in again.

"Yeah, something like that," Kent said, because if he riled Jack up enough, he'd snap, say something. And Kent didn't know what to do without Jack responding to him, giving him a clue to what he should do. "But it's never that easy during a game. If we were going one-on-one, I doubt you'd have made the shot."

Jack halted hard. He spun to Kent. "It would have been even easier."

Kent grinned. "Yeah? Let's give it a go."

Kent's skates hit the ice. Jack smashed into his shoulder, sent him hard into the boards. "The fuck was that—"

"Oops," Jack said. He stepped off the ice. Walked away from the ice, from Kent.

Actual practice came and their line was fucked up. Jack never passed to him. Not once. The coach yelled, Jack nodded and Kent never got the puck. The coach pulled Jack off the ice, sent him to the box to watch. Jack went with a glare at Kent, and Kent watched him until coach blew the whistle.

"What happened?" Jams asked, skating by, "You steal his girl?"

Kent laughed without meaning it. "I've got the looks for it."

Jack never gave him a water bottle filled with the first ice shavings of the day.

The captain talked with Jack. Then he yelled at Kent. Told him to get their shit figured out before the game. Kent gritted his teeth.

Jack and Kent did not talk before the game that night.

Kent tucked the pouch his mother had made for him under his padding. He tapped it twice. For luck. For strength. For a little bit of his mother's unconditional love. And then skated out for the worst game of the season.

Kent was on the ice with Jack for barely a minute before coach called Kent off of it, benched him the rest of the game, playing Jack instead of Kent. Even though Kent didn't have any trouble passing to Jack. Even though Kent didn't have a fucking problem with Jack. Even though, fucking Jack—

It was fucking Jack's fault that Kent wasn't playing, wasn't handling the puck and sniping it into the net every other play. Jack's fucking fault.

They didn't speak afterwards. Maybe they would have spoken if they'd lost, throwing insults and punches at each other until both of them hurt all over. Instead, Kent fielded the chirps from their teammates about trouble in paradise. Kent caught Jack's eye and told Jams that Jack was just undergoing a socializing glitch in his hockey programming. Kent had always had a gift for knowing which words would hurt the most.

It came in handy for curses.

When Kent finally made it home, catching a ride from Jams who was always slow, Jack was there, sitting on the front steps, hands clutched into fists. He looked up when Kent slammed the car door and Jams pulled away.

"Kent," Jack said when Kent didn't move forward. "I got you—" He cut himself off. Looked away from Kent. Opened his palms.

Kent took a couple steps forward, up the sidewalk to the front door. He made it close enough to see the tiny white flowers in Jack's hands, wilted but still very much alive.

"Jasmine," Kent said wearily.

Jack flushed. "It's what you thought you used last night, right? Magical, right?"

"Everything's magical."

"Yeah, well," Jack stood up, a little shaky on his feet. Drunk. Kent noted with a wary look. Drunk after a game. A game they won. And Jack wasn't a lightweight. He'd have needed lots of alcohol. Or maybe something else. Maybe he had a stash of something harder. Jack closed the gap between them, and Kent wanted to step closer. Wanted to push his body up against Jack's. Jack was always warm no matter how cold it got outside. "This is all I've got. Let's put the magic back into our hockey, okay? The team plays better with both of us."

"You play better with me," Kent said, reaching out with both hands and taking the wilted flowers. The peace offering. His fingers sliding slowly across Jack's palms. Kent looked down at the jasmine, missed Jack taking a step forward until he looked up.

Kent's eyes went to Jack's lips, to his eyes, to his lips. His hand curled around the jasmine. "I'd rather have kissed you than fucked Sara," Kent said. It was his apology, and Jack heard it.

"Me too," Jack said, leaning closer.

Kent's heart beat spiked, magic in the air. Jack was going to kiss him, grab Kent's chin, tilt it just so. His lips would be dry against Kent's, his cheek rough with stubble. He'd be hesitant in the way he never was on the ice, which was totally, one hundred percent hot—

Jack jerked back. "Practice," Jack said, stumbling a step away, two steps. 

Kent reached out and grabbed his wrist. The jasmine dropped to the frozen ground. Wait.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Jack said. He pulled his arm away.

-

On the ice, Kent lit a candle. Not a birthday candle, but one of the good hand-dipped ones his mom sent up.

"What's that for?" Jack asked, skating towards Kent.

"Yo, back off!" Kent snapped, glaring pointedly down at the pentagram pattern he had so carefully skated only moments earlier.

Jack flushed and changed directions just in time. "What happens if I break it?"

"Demons will come for your ass."

Jack skated a slow, wider circle around Kent. "So are you gonna tell me what it's for? Better be good. You're cutting into our practice time."

"We're going to make it to playoffs this year," Kent said and tilted the candle so that the wax would drip harmlessly onto the ice instead of his skin.

Jack scoffed. "Of course we are. But not because of your magic ass candle. We're making it because our team is awesome. Because we are awesome." Jack swerved to catch Kent's eyes. "We're going to make it because we are magic on the ice."

Kent grinned and maybe bit his lip. "A little more magic won't hurt anything."

He turned his attention back to the candle and lowered his voice, whispering blessings and charms into the air as the candle burned, dripped wax collecting on the ice.

-

His mom made him scrub all his equipment with salt. "To new beginnings," she told him when he dragged it all home with him, his thyme in one arm and his hockey bag in another. Everything else his billet family would keep until next season.

They had made it to playoffs and then lost during the first round. It wasn't because Kent and Jack didn't give it their all. It was because they just hadn't been good enough. 

Kent's mom kept him busy sorting stones and mashing pastes of rosemary and flax seed. She sent him out running for ingredients and digging through dirt. She made him recite blessings and prayers, spells and rhymes. She made him string herbs up to dry and polish rocks until they shined.

They didn't have money for time at the rink, so Kent ran through the neighborhood instead, sprinkling allspice as he went. For luck, for fortune to come to them.

A couple of times he talked with Jack over the phone—mixing, grinding or cutting something for his mom. They swapped running times and thoughts about the upcoming draft. "They're already talking about us," Jack said.

"Yeah?" Kent asked, because his mom didn't pay for TV and his mom didn't pay for internet. He always got his fix at billet families, ever since he was ten or twelve or somewhere around there. He went to the library to use their computers when he could. Sometimes his mom sent him there to pick up cobwebs hung over almost forgotten books.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Did you know, in the 1988-98 season there were 2,498 players in the major junior leagues and college hockey. And out of that, only 113 players moved on."

"Cool," Kent said, flattening bay leaves with the side of his knife. They were good for victory. Kent wondered if his mom would let him take a few.

"That means that maybe one player per team got drafted to play at the professional level. One per team."

"So?"

"We're on the same team, Kent." 

"Well, we're going to beat those odds. Magic's on our side."

Jack snorted and then fell silent.

"I miss you," Kent said, and Jack didn't break his silence. Instead, Kent cleared his throat and changed the topic, asking how Jack's parents were doing.

-

It was the first practice of the season. Or, technically, practice started in thirty minutes. Jack and Kent were there early, because they were always there early.

Jack was wearing the C, Kent the A.

"Got my ice?" Kent shouted as he skated into the rink, and Jack grinned, a water bottle in one gloved hand. "What's got you so happy?"

Jack crashed into Kent, shoved him into the boards, the bottle into his hands. He dropped his gloves, grabbed Kent's face and kissed him. Kent dropped the water bottle. It crashed at their feet. Kent kissed Jack back, gloves awkward as Kent tried to rest them against Jack's body, tried to pull him closer. Kent ripped his mind from kissing—fuck yes—from kissing Jack for one hot moment to vigorously shake off his gloves, but by the time he got them off, Jack had pulled away. Pulled away just enough to tip his head against Kent's. They weren't kissing anymore. But that was okay. Because Kent's lips still tingled and was that mint in Jack's breath?

Kent's hands rested on Jack's waist, pressed into the thin layer of fat over muscle. He ran his thumb slowly over Jack's skin. "Missed me?" Kent mumbled, and Jack kissed him again, slower sweeter.

They wrecked it on the ice at practice. Jack and Kent. Kent and Jack. It was like they hadn't ever spent a day off the ice.

Jack went home with Kent, and he commented on the plants, and the thyme that was putting out little purple blooms. "Happy?" Jack asked with a laugh.

Kent kissed Jack in response.

-

When the press first came after Kent, he chewed cattails, and Jack laughed and asked him what the hell he was doing. He refused them when Kent offered a reed or two to him. But joke was on Jack, because Kent always thought he did a bit better in interviews.

It was weird. The interviews. They wanted to talk about the rivalry between him and Jack, but as far as Kent was concerned, they were the best part of each other. They played their best together on the ice. They scored like fucking animals.

The interviewers always asked what their secret was. Jack always said something like, "There's no secret. Just hard work and dedication."

Kent always said, "It's magic," and subconsciously touched the spot he kept the pouch his mom had given him back when hockey first became something serious.

-

"What would you give to win the Memorial Cup?" Kent asked one day, not even halfway through the season, slurring his words, magic on his mind, Jack's kisses against his lips. They were in for the night. Or, well, Kent was in for the night and Jack was with him. Every single plant was blooming in his room. Blooming beautiful, gorgeous flowers.

"Everything," Jack said. "I'd give up everything."

Kent pulled away, pushed himself up onto an elbow to look down at Jack's sleepy eyes. "Seriously?"

"Some days I'm willing to die for it." Kent chuckled, but Jack didn't follow his lead. He frowned instead. "I'm being serious. It's all I've ever wanted."

"You're lying," Kent said. "All you've ever wanted is to play in the NHL."

"And to win," Jack said with a smile. "Win everything."

They kissed again, and then Kent pulled away. "I can guarantee we'll snag the Memorial Cup this year," he said.

"Yeah?"

"With wills like ours. There's no way the magic won't take hold. We'll still have to work for it, because magic isn't a free ride, but—"

"Let's do it," Jack said. "A little magic never hurt anyone, did it?"

They collected things over time. A few bay leaves. Some thyme. Jack's first hat trick puck. Kent's first jersey with his name on it. A sock from Bad Bob Zimmermann. ("Why do you need my dad's sock?" "We need all the talent we can get.") Kent watched how the wind blew the clouds away from the moon, and Jack leaned over Kent's shoulder as Kent carefully unrolled socks full of stones. Kent pulled a couple ice cubes made from the first snow in Quebec out of the freezer, set them in a thermos to stay cold. He threw candles in a bag, and then sat shot gun as Jack drove them out to the nearest frozen lake.

"You sure about this?" Kent asked, and Jack kissed him as they stood, freezing their asses off in the middle of the lake.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Let's get that Memorial Cup."

The moon was a waxing crescent, and the wind wasn't too strong. Not strong enough to blow away the crushed bay leaves Kent dropped in the middle of a circle of spilled olive oil. He piled the other materials on top, carefully placed lit candles around them. He muttered words and waved his hands, and Jack stood by his side in the circle.

"Okay," Kent said, looking to Jack. "Now say what you're willing to give up."

"Everything," Jack said without hesitation.

"Everything," Kent repeated.

Everything.

They set the pile on fire, doused it in olive oil and then ran the fuck off the ice.

-

They won the next game, and they kept right on winning. They kept sinking shots into the net, kept passing without looking at one another. There was lots of victory everything. Victory drinking, kissing, blow jobs, sex.

"I've got something for you," Kent said, naked and blowing smoke out the window of his room and towards the woods. The weed was great. It was all great. All of this was just great. One foot against the floor, the other bunched up with him on the windowsill. 

"Yeah?" Jack asked and fitted himself in the space across from Kent. Kent looked him over. Looked him over with that little shine of sweat on his skin. And Kent didn't want to be anywhere else in the world, didn't want to be anything else. He wanted this forever. He wanted Jack with his dark hair that curled at the ends when it got too long. He wanted Jack who lit up every time he went onto the ice, who transformed every time he skated. He wanted Jack who kissed without hesitation. He wanted Jack who teased him about his magic in the same breath he capped water bottles full of ice shavings for him. Kent wanted Jack. Wanted him so badly. Even after the draft. For years afterwards. Decades. Maybe for an entire century.

Jack grinned, watching Kent watch him. Kent leaned over and kissed him, fitting their lips together in a way that was as natural as breathing. Kent was pretty sure he couldn't lose Jack at this point. It would be like losing the ability to breathe. Not that Kent was worried about that. He was pretty sure Jack felt the same way about him. Kent pulled back, and Jack snagged the dangling blunt from his fingertips.

Kent leaned inside the window a little, enough to reach his nightstand. He tugged the top drawer open and pulled out a little sack. "Rose quartz," Kent said, and he held it out towards Jack. "Take it," he told Jack. His mother had given it to him. Her mother had given it to her. Her mother to her, passed down through the generations. 

Jack exchanged the weed for the sack. He pried it open at Kent's nod and pulled out the smoothed pink stone. Jack nodded and ran his fingers over it. "It's magic, isn't it?"

"Something like that," Kent said with a smile on his face. He reached forward and closed Jack's hand the stone. "Even when we go to different teams," Kent said, "I'm still going to be with you. That's its magic. You've just got to run your fingers over it. That's how it got smoothed, you know. Years of contact. Years of love."

"Yeah?" Jack said with a weary grin, and Kent hoped he knew this was Kent's way of saying _I love you_.

-

Kent breezed into Jack's room. "Ready?" he shouted. Jack wasn't there. Probably in the bathroom. "Mrs. Wilson let me in!" Kent heard a distance response, and Kent plopped himself on Jack's bed. He looked over at the window and paused. The bottle of starlight was gone. In its place was a bottle of something else. Kent was leaning forward to snag it for a closer look when Jack walked in, shirt still open. 

"Yo," Kent said, and Jack grunted in acknowledgement and snagged the bottle from where it rested. He popped it open and dumped two pills into his hand, wandering over to his water bottle on his dresser. "Did you have a bad day?" Kent asked.

"What?" Jack said after swallowing the pills.

"The starlight's gone."

"Oh," Jack said. "Yeah. That was a while ago." He leaned over the bed, dropped his head right down over top of Kent's.

"Want to talk about it?" Kent asked, staring at Jack cross-eyed. He was so close.

"Not really," Jack said before kissing him. And Kent grinned, sliding his hands against Jack's abs, because if all Jack really wanted to do was kiss Kent, then Kent was absolutely fine with that. Though he made a note that they should catch lots of fireflies together. During the summer. When there was no hockey to worry about. No hockey to make Jack antsy. To make him snappy.

Just summer, Kent and a couple of fireflies.

-

Kent roared as he scored his 75th goal of the season. He spun to his right, excepting Jack to still be there from the assist, excepting Jack to be the first in the celly. He wasn't there. Jams was there instead. Which, as far as Kent was concerned, still worked. More and more players slammed into Kent, and even though he was suddenly at the bottom of a pile of hockey players he felt like he was on the top. On the very tippy top of the entire world!

The only thing that would've been better was that if Jack was right by his side, screaming congratulations in his ear.

Instead it was Jams. It was Doug. It was every single one of their teammates!

They had to pull away finally, because there were two minutes left in a game. But they were going to win it. Kent felt it in his bones, could taste victory on his tongue.

The game limped on, the other team dragging on the ice. Kent skated circles around them, him and Jack playing an elaborate game of keep away. When the timer buzzed, he whooped again. His heart in his throat as they moved to 30 winning games in a row. The big fucking 3-0! He collected fist bumps in the locker room and couldn’t bring a wider grin onto his face as Jams announced a party at his place.

Because, "It's the weekend!" Doug sang, and Kent echoed the call.

Kent looked for Jack, to coordinate rides, but he wasn't there. "Zimms?" Kent shouted, and the other players took up the call, added captain to it.

"Thought I saw him take off," Kent heard. "He's been doing that a lot."

"See you in thirty!" Kent cried, and then spun out the door, ready to find Jack, tackle him, hug him, kiss him. Whatever the situation called for. Maybe all three. They'd never had sex at the rink though so maybe that too—

Kent slowed his step as he found Jack on the rink, shooting at the empty net. One after another after another. Kent glanced around the stadium and saw that everyone had already filtered out.

"Hey," Kent called and leaned over the boards. He didn't have his skates on. Jack didn't look up at him, and Kent frowned. "What's gotten into you? We won. I got my seventy-fifth—"

"I know," Jack cut across him quickly, sharply. He punctuated his words with a solid slap shot.

"So what's your—"

"Nothing." Another puck slammed across the ice.

"Obviously something's…" Kent trailed off as he realized the problem. Jack was at 74. 74 goals for the season. "Well that's a stupid reason to be mad."

"Yeah, well your dad isn't Bad Bob."

"We're gonna win the Memorial Cup, don't—"

"That's not enough!" Jack screamed. He hit another puck and it went wild. Didn't even hit a goal post. Kent watch Jack take a solid breath, one that put oxygen into every part of his body. Kent watched Jack let his breath out thinly, between clenched teeth. "I need to go first," Jack said and sent a puck into the cage. 

Kent tightened his jaw. "Well, you probably will."

"Not with how I'm doing right now."

Kent forced himself to relax. "That's fine. Let's go light a candle. I've got some orange peel we can burn over it. Then we'll go to Jams's party. "

"No," Jack said.

"What do you mean no?"

"No! I'm not going to cheat."

"Cheat?" 

"That's why you always win!" Jack roared, and Kent flinched back as Jack spun towards him, skated towards him. "You use your magic to fucking cheat. I don't know how you do it, but you do! If you didn't have it, you wouldn't be half as good. You wouldn’t be playing on a line with me. You wouldn't even be here." Jack spat onto the ice. 

"You're just mad," Kent forced himself to say. "You're just angry."

"Yeah? Prove me wrong! No magic. No first ice shavings until we win the Memorial Cup. Then if you're still ahead you can say you told me so."

"I can't do that," Kent said. "I'm not killing my thyme."

"Just give it normal water!"

"It doesn't work like that."

"Fucking throw it out then! Be done with it!"

Kent wiped at his eyes. Stupid. So stupid. This was all so stupid. He turned around and left Jack on the ice, putting pucks into the back of an empty net.

They didn't talk about it at the party. Instead Jack found them an unlocked bedroom and sucked Kent off.

-

Jack let Kent drag him out into the starlight, and they soaked up the new moon. "A new beginning in just a couple of months," Kent said between kisses.

"Repeat after me," Kent said to Jack.

And Jack dutifully repeated the rhyme as Kent fed it to him line by line, locking in the starlight under a sky that promised new beginnings, new starts.

"Again," Kent said, partly to hear Jack say it again, partly because he thought Jack needed all the starlight he could get. Something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He had almost figured it out, but then Jack kissed him silly, and the thought went far, far from his mind. Because, truly, this was perfect.

What was going on was perfect.

They were going to win the Memorial Cup. Their eyes on the prize before they even made it to playoffs.

-

They played the best hockey they ever played.

They won playoffs and then won every single game after that. They celly'd like there was no tomorrow, because in a way there wasn't. This was it. This was Jack and Kent and Kent and Jack and the moment they skated off the ice, they wouldn't be on the same team again. At least not for a long while. Not for a couple of years at least.

This magic on the ice, this thing between them, letting them play their best hockey ever, would have to be put on hold. For a while. But not forever, they promised each other, skating in circles around each other. Not forever.

They made fantastical plans to end up on the same team again. They promised each other things they truthfully had no control over.

-

Jack came to visit Kent in the little apartment he shared with his mom and hundreds of plants. Kent was definitely still glowing from their winning season, even if Jack looked a little down, was already looking forward to the draft. Questioning who would go first, who would go second.

No amount of kissing or chamomile helped Jack breathe a little easier.

Jack took a couple of pills instead. Which, might not be the same as a paste of acorns and valerian, but sure worked about the same as far as Kent could tell. It made Jack feel better at the very least.

Kent showed off the plants and his family's rock collection. He opened the freezer to show Jack ice cubes from first and last snows, from puddles of rainstorms that had also spawned rainbows. He took Jack's hand and pulled him to the dusty old section of the library where he sometimes went to gather cobwebs strung over almost forgotten books.

They made out there for a while. "Do you still have the rose quartz?" Kent asked, biting at Jack's neck.

Jack nodded and put his hands on each side of Kent's face, pulling him up for a thoroughly enjoyable kiss that curled his toes.

Kent's mom shooed them out of the house at sunset to gather fireflies. She sent them out with mason jars that had holes in their lids.

Kent pulled Jack to his favorite park and they caught fireflies and Jack dutifully repeated the rhyme to send their light into his soul. "Again," Kent told him. Again and again.

Jack laughed after the fifth time. "If it didn't work by now," he said, catching one in his mason jar, "I don't think it will ever work on me."

"One more time," Kent said.

-

Kent's mom took him aside after Jack flew back home to his family. "Something's wrong with him," she said, rubbing a shard of amethyst between her fingers.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kent said with a laugh. "He's just Jack. That's just the way he is."

"No," she said. "Magic gone wrong. In him, in you. What did you do?"

Kent shrugged off his mother's arm. "Nothing."

She eyed him and then sent him to dig up dandelions.

When he came back, she made him scrub himself with salt. She made him rinse it off with mint infused water, and then sent him to sprinkle nutmeg in his shoes. "Mom," he said, and she sent him to gather willow branches to stick between all his clothing.

They lit a yellow candle before Kent left for the draft. She pressed four leaf clovers into his hands, rolled in allspice. She wished him good luck by tapping the pouch she had given him years ago, muttering a rhyme under her breath.

-

Kent had his own hotel room for the draft. He brought his thyme with him and invited Jack over for the night. He almost succeeded in talking Jack into a bath of salt and mint, like Kent's mom had made him. Instead they had long, slow sex and kissed for ages.

Kent drifted into sleep after that, waking up every fifteen minutes as Jack kept dropping into the bathroom to splash water on his face. "Jack," Kent muttered and flopped his arm over to where Jack normally slept. "Zimms?" Kent tried again, and then realized the faucet was running, Jack probably couldn't hear him.

Kent called a little louder, and Jack didn't respond.

"God," Kent said, sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes. It was ass-o'clock. If he ever needed his beauty sleep... "Zimms, your nerves are making me nervous." Kent swung his legs over the side of the bed and padded into the bathroom. "Mom gave me some chamomile and a bottle of starlight if you need it." Kent swung an arm over his eyes against the blinding bathroom light. "Zimms," he said again, and Jack didn't respond. "Zimms?"

Kent lowered his arm. "Zimms," he said again and again and again and crouched down next to Jack, sprawled out on the floor. And he said Jack's name again. And again, and again and his hands crawled over Jack's body, turned him over, pressed into his cheeks, against his forehead, his cheeks, his forehead, his arms, his sides. He choked out Jack's name. Choked it out again and again, and his hands rose to his head in panic, in horror, and he scrambled for the phone in the room. And he didn't know how to call out so he called the front desk, biting into his fist and looking out the window, at his thyme on the table. He couldn't see Jack when he called, when he was on the phone demanding an ambulance and _oh God, fuck, quick, make it quick_. Kent couldn't see Jack at all.

They called the ambulance for him, and Kent let the phone go, let it hang, banging against the table, as he grabbed his thyme and stumbled back to Jack. Back to Jack who wasn't breathing. Or maybe he was, and Kent, Kent—He plucked leaf after leaf off his plant and dropped it onto Jack's body with shivering fingers, whispering the old rhyme of healing his mother taught him before she taught him his alphabet. He stuffed the leaves under Jack's shirt, tucked them into the crease in his collar bone, muttering, muttering, muttering. Kent stripped his plant bare and only then did someone pound on the door, demand entrance, only then did someone come to save the day.

They snapped at Kent, asked him what the fuck he was doing as they brushed off the plant, brushed off the leaves of healing, hope, recovery, love. They brushed all the thyme to the floor and demanded answers to questions Kent didn't really have.

They took Jack away on a stretcher, and Kent went with them, scampering through the halls and trying to grab Jack's hand in the elevator, even though they said _family, family only_. And they hooked Jack up to the monitor in the ambulance, and Kent watched—heard—as Jack's heart stopped. Watched as they restarted it, watched as they slammed the ambulance doors closed, saying _family, family only_.

Someone stayed behind and asked for Jack's parents' information.

Kent didn't have the money to get to the hospital. So he went back to the room, looking at his thyme plant with none of its leaves. Not a single leaf left on it.

And Kent remembered Jack and him standing in the center of the frozen lake, faces flushed and asking magic to help them win the Memorial Cup. _Everything,_ they had said. They'd give up everything to win the Memorial Cup.

-

Kent went first in the draft with shaking hands and vomit sitting at the back of his throat.

-

He spent more time in the library than at home for the rest of the summer, scrolling through articles speculating about suicide. Speculating about substance abuse.

He'd have asked Jack, but Jack didn't pick up when he called.

Kent lit a white candle and dropped dried apple peels onto the flames.

-

Kent didn't know what Jack needed, so he sent him stones each promising something else. Healing and health. Happiness. Strength. Clarity. Hope. Love.

Eventually Kent stopped sending magic Jack's way. He stopped lighting candles for him and stopped shipping him stones from Kent's family collection. 

-

Kent moved to Vegas, and his thyme plant died a slow death. Of course it did. It didn't have any leaves.

He got a pot of catnip to replace it. 

He got a TV too. Kept it permanently switched to ESPN.

He sat in front of it on the single kitchen stool he had, legs drawn up to the top rung. He sat there as they talked about Jack and kept talking about Jack. About overdose and cocaine and pressure and legacies.

(They didn't talk about magic. About how it was really magic gone wrong, gone bad that stole the NHL away from Jack. How Kent had stolen Jack's dream from him. Jack's dream and Jack's first—and only—love.) 

And then ESPN talked about Kent and about Kent not cracking under pressure. They talked about how Kent and Jack must not have been as close as everyone thought, because Kent hadn't cried once. Because Kent had smiled his way through the draft. Because Kent hadn't gone once to visit Jack. 

They talked about how now no one would ever know who was better: Parson or Zimmermann. 

They said that Jack had lost absolutely everything, but Kent had won it all. 

Kent had gotten a pot of catnip, because it was supposed to keep out thoughts that spiraled darker. Because catnip was supposed to help him breathe easier. 

But sometimes magic wasn't enough. 

-

Kent went shopping with his signing bonus. He got leather couches and a brand new car. He got expensive silverware and a laptop with a touch screen. And a cell phone that he transferred his old number to. In case Jack called. He didn't. 

(Kent also bought amethyst, hundreds of crystals that he set out on the counter and tucked into his equipment bag. He squeezed one when he went running and slept with at least three under his pillow every night. Some days Kent thought it made it easier to breathe, easier to think. But most days Kent thought magic was part of the everything he had given up for hockey.) 

-

Kent called his mom crying, and she told him to take out the rose quartz, because nothing was more powerful, more grounding, more soothing than love. He told her he had given it to Jack. She said, "Oh." She said it softly over the phone. Kent's heart twisted instead of healed. 

She asked if Jack had called, and Kent told her no.  

She said just text him, and Kent told her he had. 

She told him to light candles during the new moon and say a rhyme for guidance and harmony. 

Kent did. 

But the wind swept away the flame as soon as Kent lit them.

She told him the earliest day she could get off work, and it wasn't soon enough for Kent.

He guessed she was part of what he had given up too.  

-

 

Kent went to practice early, making it on the ice to gather up the first ice shavings. He made it first for a week before someone showed up before him.

"Yo, Parse," Little John said as Kent skated onto the ice, panic filling his mouth as he realized he wasn't going to get what he came for. He wasn't going to get to bring magic home to his plant, to his apartment. "Whatcha doing here?" Little John asked. "Thought you needed your beauty sleep."

"Truth," Kent said after a beat too long, "but I needed to get my first ice shavings." And Kent remembered when Jack got here before him, skating smugly on the ice. When Kent had asked Jack to gather up the ice for him. When Kent had brought Jack into the magic. When Jack had become part of the magic.

"Your what?"

"Call it a superstition," Kent said, swallowing down words like magic and sanity. "I water my catnip with it."

"Your catnip?"

"It lives in my apartment."

"And you water it with this crummy ice?"

Kent laughed weakly, because he guessed it was probably really shitty water to give to a plant. But it didn't stop him from looking around the ice, trying to guess where the first ice shavings were. He didn't want to go a day without them. Didn’t want to risk it. Not when everything had been taken from him, and Kent was desperately clinging to every little part he had recovered.

"You know this probably has like eight thousand chemicals in it."

"I've been doing it for years, none of the plants have ever died from this."

Little John snorted. "You've got one strange superstition," he said.

Kent smiled weakly at that, peaking back at a time before the Q. At his mother's insistence on loading his pockets with rosemary and rocks that weighed more than he had. "I've got loads of superstitions," Kent said. "But first ice shavings are the icing on the cake. Can't fuck that one up."

"Roger," Little John said with a laugh, "Every time I make it here before you, I'll make sure to get you your ice. Sound good? Can't fuck with a rookie's superstition. You guys are already nervous enough."

"Smart move, Little John," Kent said and tapped his stick twice on the ice before heading out. He was going for a run.

By the time team practice came around, Little John had spread the word about Kent's need for first ice shavings, and Kent took the chirping like a champ. It settled something warm in his chest he'd been missing for a while, since Jack... Kent clung onto it as the team chirped like their lives depended on it, like the team depended on it.

"Our little superstitious first drafter!"

"He won't have any trouble keeping up with all the shit you do."

"At least he doesn't have to fart before each game."

"Low blow, Filch, low blow."

"Parse, man, you should get a cat to go with that catnip."

"My old lady owns a shelter," said Dicky. "Has this mean little fiend I'm sure you'd get along great with."

"Yeah?" Kent said, leaning against his stick with a widening smile on his lips. "Give me a where and a when and I'll swing by and check her out. She black?"

"Naw, kind of a cloudy color. Only got one eye."

Dicky was there when Kent swung by the shelter. He clapped Kent on the back and told him not to listen too hard to anything his mom says. Kent, amused, realized exactly why when he met Dicky's mom, a mean old lady who snapped and scowled at Kent. She insulted him no less than four times before he got a good look at the cat.

"You'd think your chirp game would be stronger," Kent muttered as he looked at the cat who flickered her straggly tail at him. She had one dark blue eye. Her other one was sewn tightly shut.

"Word on the street is that she lost it fighting a bear."

"You're shitting me."

"Ain't she a princess?"

Kent brought her home, piled up with supplies from Dicky's mom. Dicky would apparently do the house calls to make sure the cat was doing okay. The first thing Kent did when he brought her home was name her the most obnoxious name to go with her most obnoxious self: Kit Purson.

Kit loved the catnip, and while she was enthralled with it, Kent scrubbed her down with lemon and salt water and then washed her off. She got couple of good swipes in at him. Drew a little bit of blood.

Kent made her a princess on social media. An evil princess with a penchant for Aces' blood. 

-

Kent spread salt on his windowsills and checked every night to make sure the lines remained unbroken. He fumbled together patterns of stones that were meant to keep away the nightmares where he kept waking up to Jack never waking up. Where his teammates hissed about drug overdoses and waited to see Kent breakdown in sobs that took over his whole body. Where Dicky came and took away Kit who wrapped around his legs to sleep at night. 

The only thing Kent didn't have nightmares about was losing his place in the NHL. After all, this was what he had given up everything for.

-

Kent made it to the rink when he normally did, but Filch was already trudging off the ice. Kent's heart sank. First ice shavings gone.

Except they weren't. "Dude, put your ice in the break freezer," Filch said. "Do you need us to keep that shit cold? Or can we just let it sit in your cubby? Little John wasn't totally clear."

"Cubby works."

"Solid." 

-

Kent flew his mom out for one of his first games, the soonest she could come.

She brought pastes, candles and bottles of dried things with her. She found her way into the locker room with, apparently, a smile and a couple of dropped pine needles. The guys loved her. Magic hadn't left her. 

"She a witch?" Little John asked, one of his mom's telltale pouches in his hands. "You a wizard?"

Kent laughed. "We're just super superstition," he said instead of, "Magic won me the Memorial Cup and stole everything else." 

Kent's mom helped him air out his apartment the proper way. She tied oak above all the windows and scrubbed the floors with olive oil. She cleaned away his salt and dunked Kit in an entire bowl of sunflower seeds. (Posted that experience on Twitter.) She piled apples high on the counter and powdered Kent's bed with peppermint and rosemary. She lit candles in the four cardinal directions and led Kent through sayings about healing and guidance and new beginnings. She hugged him tight and told him everything would turn out all right.

When she flew home, she left an array of carefully labeled bottles. Rain from a rainbow. Pebbles collected during the lighting flashes of a snowstorm. Butterfly scales scraped from the petals of roses. A baby's first laugh. 

Little John dropped by without calling ahead first. He was smiling. He looked around the apartment with an even wider grin. "Your mom can really work some magic."

"She can," Kent said—a little dryly, a little softly, a little wistfully.

Little John cautiously offered Kent the name of his therapist, scratching his head and trying not to look too awkward. "To new beginnings, yeah?" Little John said with a smile. 

-

"He captures starlight in beer bottles too," Filch said. 

"Are you shitting me?" Little John asked.

Kent groaned and lowered his head into his hands. "I do not."

"I totally caught you. Red handed. He was like a little nymph prancing out there. If we were in the country I bet he'd have been naked."

"Parse's got a saying and everything to like seal the air in."

Kent didn't think his face could get redder.

"How did it go?" Dicky asked.

"Something about stars and shit, I don't know."

"Twinkle, twinkle?"

"No," Kent grumbled from between his hands.

"We've found out your secret," Dicky said. "Now you've got to own up to it."

Kent gave them all a good look at his middle fingers, even though two bottles were currently tucked far back in his duffel bag.

He still needed them sometimes, after games or practices when he thought he saw Jack twisting between the lines, shouting at him for the puck. Kent needed them sometimes when a teammate said something innocent about Jack, and something dark—like betrayal, like disappointment, like sadness, like hurt, like horror, like dishonesty—bloomed inside Kent. 

-

Kent visited Jack once, after two years, clutching a bottle of starlight in his hands, unsure what exactly to say. He found the university name on a tabloid. Found the hockey house on the school's website.

Jack answered the door, took a couple steps back when he saw Kent.

"Here," Kent said and shoved a capped beer bottle into Jack's hands. "I brought you starlight. In case you have a bad day."

"I don't have bad days anymore," Jack replied, refusing to take the bottle.

"Can I come in?" Kent asked. And Jack shook his head. Kent craned his head and saw a couple of people milling around inside.

"Who is it?" someone asked.

Jack said, "No one," and shut the door in Kent's face. Kent twisted the bottle around in his hands and shouted. He threw it against the door. It shattered, and Kent didn't say the rhyme to usher the stars towards his soul.

"Asshole!" Kent heard from inside, and he went back to his car. Went back to the hotel where he was rooming with Dicky.

-

Kent became captain.

He burned cedar for courage and oak for strength.

And he might have dropped a daffodil petal into everyone's skates before the first practice. For new beginnings.

He heaved the Stanley Cup into the air that season without Jack.

He kissed it as Little John filled a plastic water bottle with Stanley Cup winning ice and Filch swung around a mason jar to capture the Stanley Cup winning atmosphere. Kent skated around the rink with the Cup as Dicky screamed the rhyme to capture starlight in his soul at the top of his lungs, even though they were definitely not under a cloudless sky. The other guys joined in.

-

Instead of a bottle of starlight, Kent went to Samwell with a proposition.

He scattered allspice behind him as he walked up to the door and then walked right into the house. A party was in full swing, and Kent found himself caught up in it all. In shouts and selfies and congratulations and questions, and it took time for Kent to find Jack. Took about two beers and two shots.

Jack led Kent up to his room, to privacy that didn't really exist. The party bled in through the walls, music and shouts and cheers.

"What are you doing here?" Jack asked, and Kent looked at the windowsill where there was a capped beer bottle and an aged sticky note under it. Kent swallowed and wondered if he should have brought a bottle to join it. "Kent," Jack snapped, and Kent looked at Jack.

"I…"

"No, wait," Jack said suddenly and stepped past Kent to his dresser. If Kent reached out, he could grab onto Jack's wrist, pull him close, kiss him. Kent went for it, and Jack pulled away. He pulled away from Kent and pressed a stone into Kent's hand in reply. Kent's fingers ran over its smooth surface. He looked down at the rose quartz in his palm. He smoothed his thumb over it and said softly, "I miss you."

Instead of kissing Kent, instead of saying the words back, Jack said the most final of goodbyes Kent had ever heard.

Kent wasn't ready to hear it. He told Jack as much, yelled it at him. 

When Kent got back to the room he was sharing with Dicky, there was a bottle of starlight waiting for him.

"Last time you went out after a Bruins game you came back in a sour mode too," Dicky said as a way of explanation and without looking too closely at Kent. He was actually clipping his toenails, sneaking glances between each clip.

Kent shrugged.

"It's Zimmermann isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Kent said.

"Bad blood?"

Kent crinkled his face as he saw a toenail clipping go flying across the room. "I am so glad I don't have to clean your nasty ass toenails off the ground."

Dicky flicked the next one towards Kent.

"I'll slam him into the boards a couple times for you."

"He's not in the NHL."

"When he is," Dicky promised and then told Kent to unscrew his damn bottle of starlight and say the rhyme. Or did he forget and Dicky would have to say it for him?

-

Kent fended off Kit's attempt at taking another chunk out of his arm as the Aces tramped around his apartment and sprawled wherever a body could fit.

There was spaghetti and meat sauce by the gallon and no games for three days.

"Kent," Dicky said, and Kit wandered off to attack a rookie, easier pickings. "Zimmermann's playing."

Kent lifted his head. "Yeah?"

"I think it's his first game."

"It is," Kent confirmed, and he watched as Jack skated onto the ice.

Jack was four years of growth away from playing with Kent; he was built up from four years in the NCAA. He didn't play anything like he was 18 and straight out of the Q; he didn't play like Kent remembered him. He skated stronger, faster.

"What was it like playing with him in the Q?" one of the rookies, Grammar, asked from his place on the floor.

Kent's mouth lifted up into a grin even as Dicky shot Grammar a hard look. "Kind of magical," Kent said and then, "Who's in the kitchen?"

Little John's voice filtered back.

"Grab me a candle and some matches, will you? And an orange?"

"Care for a color?"

"White," Kent said.

"Another superstition, cap?" Grammar asked as Little John tossed the called for materials to Kent.

"Something like that," Kent said, lighting the candle. He held it between his legs and slid a coaster between the drip of wax and his skin. He peeled the orange with careful, precise movements and slowly fed the peel into the flame. It smoked something awful. Kent finished feeding the flame. He looked up just in time to see Jack score his first goal in the NHL.

"Grammar," Kent said, and Grammar turned his head. "Stick this in the holder, will you?" Grammar pushed himself off the couch, grabbing the candle from Kent.

The candle burned itself out when the final buzzer sounded.

-

Playing against Jack in the NHL was nothing like playing with Jack in the Q. Both of them were too different. Their bodies, their playing styles, their teams. Their faces offs were silent and strained. More often than not, Kent won them, years of playing in the NHL edging out Jack's work in the NCAA.

Dicky slammed Jack no less than three times into the boards. In return, Dicky got reamed by a large Russian. 

Kent scored the winning goal on foreign ice, and he couldn't help the grin that edged its way across his face. He took his place in the line after a celly or two, edging through the fist bumps. He paused at Jack, and Jack paused at him.

Kent opened his mouth to say something more than, "Good game," but Jack didn't give him time too, moving on before either of them said anything.

Kent skated off the ice and ran his hands through his hair.

Dicky, with blood congealed on his lip, wanted to know if everything was okay.

"Yeah," Kent said. "We won, didn't we?"

The press wanted to know all about how it felt to play on the ice against Jack, and Kent found the same words he used to describe them playing on the ice together coming out, "Basically magic."

The press wanted more. Good magic? Bad magic? What kind of answer was magic anyway?

Kent shrugged and hit the showers. Little John slapped him on the back as he walked past and said something about drinks. "Tweet about something other than your one-eyed princess."

"Did you get her a new sitter? My girl's twelve now, you know," Filch said, shoving his feet into some sneakers. "She'd jump at the chance to make some extra cash cat sitting."

"Maybe," Kent said and waited as Little John pulled up directions to the place they were going to. A short walk from the rink and an even shorter walk to the hotel. They headed out, and Kent stopped three steps out of the locker room.

Jack was there. Waiting for him. He was holding a water bottle. "Can we talk?" Jack asked, and Kent glanced at his teammates who were very much watching everything like the gossiping assholes they were. They didn't seem to be walking on, so Kent took the lead, walking down the hallway and out of hearing distance. Jack followed him.

"Sorry about the checks," Kent said as way of opening, when Jack didn't say a word.

Jack shrugged. "Tater got him back pretty good. It’s the game, you know?"

"Yeah. He drew some blood. Crowd likes that. Blood thirsty animals or what?"

Jack smiled a little, and then shoved the water bottle towards Kent. "Here," he said. "It's the first ice shavings." Jack shrugged his shoulders as Kent took the bottle from his hands. "I came in early, cut the ice."

Kent smiled, a little tug up of his lips. "Thanks," he said. 

His catnip didn't boom like the thyme had when it got water from Jack. But that was fine.

The catnip bloomed whenever it got water from Kent's teammates. 

-

The Aces knew about superstitions before Kent made it on their team. 

They knew about playoff beards and about putting equipment on in a certain order. About not touching their conference trophy until they won it and about always hitting the ice in the same order.

But when Kent joined the team, they learned a bit about magic. They learned about pouches of knick knacks and scooping up ice in water bottles. They learned about lighting candles and rubbing rose quartz. They learned about capturing starlight in empty beer bottles for cloudy days and dropping daffodil petals when they needed a new beginning. 

The Aces knew about superstitions before Kent made the team, but when Kent stepped onto the ice with them, they learned about magic.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! ^^ 
> 
> I'm also working on something that uses a little bit of Québécois, and if anyone would be willing to help me with the language a bit, I'd so much appreciate it! Just drop me a line here or on [tumblr](https://megancrtr.tumblr.com). Thank you!!


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